Alpinist shuts down magazine, website and film festival

Alpinist LLC, which publishes the climbing magazine Alpinist, runs the
website www.alpinist.com, and produces The Alpinist Film Festival,
announced that the October 2008 financial crisis has forced them to
suspend operations.
...

This is a huge loss for the climbing community. There are still some back issues available, obviously becoming collector's items immediately. Even non-climbers seem to find the magazine really exciting, with the fantastic photography and excellent writing. Each issue was like a coffee-table book.

The remaining climbing magazines that cover the whole range of climbing activities, Climbing and Rock&Ice are doing ok, though the current economic climate will be a test. There are other climbing-oriented magazines that are more niche (like Urban Climber). But nothing like Alpinist.

Yes, we here in Jackson will miss the popular magazine Alpinist. We will have now have to find a new bathroom reading material here at Bill Briggs household.
Do you know who Bill Briggs is and what he did as a first in the early 1970's?

Some football player who did a risky thing with boards on his feet in 1971. Kind of the inverse of Glenn Exxum who went up the same area with football cleats. (don't want to spoil the fun for others who might want to chime in).

Briggs skied the Grand June 16, 1971 and was a high school football player in his youth (no, not the NFL pro of the same name). I just had to put in the connection with Exxum's climb of the Grand with football shoes on, obscure as it is. Briggs did not ski the whole distance top to bottom (that came years later), but rappelled a couple pitches. I met him the only time I skied at Snow King (we were skiing at Targhee and decided to drive over the hill for the day - Targhee is much superior... or was before the present ownership).

I have lived in Bill's house now for about 4 years off and on. The rent here is the cheapest in town at $275, other than camping. He is in his 70's now and is a very good guy. He still is the head of the American Ski School and goes out everyday in winter to work on the routes on Snow King.
He still sells photo posters showing his route off the Grand.
He plays his banjo every sunday night over in Wilson.

I just realized that my comment on Briggs' rappelling a section during his ski descent of the Grand might sound like I was saying it wasn't a "real" ski descent. It was and is recognized by the whole BC ski community as THE FIRST ski descent of the Grand, and remains one of the few ski descents of the Grand (very few parts of the route you could get me on with skis!). I checked with a friend who is an extreme skier and has skied the Grand, and he told me the rappel section was the one 50-meter section that I have rappelled when descending the Grand after summer climbs. Most people, including Briggs, do it as a single rappel, though originally and sometimes still, it is done as 2 rappels. There are a number of major ski descents that have been done with a few rappel sections and some include skiing on belay.

Briggs also did the first ski traverse from the Bugs to Rogers Pass (with some companions), and lots of other firsts, so he is sort of the "father" of extreme skiing.

Alpinist, a 9,000-circulation quarterly about alpine-style mountain climbing which ceased publication in October, has been sold. According to a source, the six-year-old, high-gloss, high production-value magazine with a small but passionate community of climbers, was sold via a “live phone auction” for—wait for it—$71,000.

The buyer is Height of Land Publications, Vermont-based publisher of Backcountry magazine. The seller, Marc Ewing, had pumped at least $2 million into Alpinist, but failed to bring it to profitability. The magazine launched in 2002.